Arm is working with startup Kenyi to develop a virtual RAN competitor to Intel on Arm-based processors.

Arm of Cambridge, as it might be known in refined circles, has long generated most of its revenue by licensing chip blueprints to smartphone manufacturers. Yet the Cambridge-based company—now owned by Japan's SoftBank but still headquartered in the UK—has been aggressively expanding beyond its traditional licensing business. Vehicles, robotics, and artificial intelligence now feature prominently in its latest earnings releases. The company has also pushed into the data center market, where Intel and AMD architectures once dominated unchallenged. In a controversial departure from its licensing roots, Arm began manufacturing its own central processing units this year. However, its progress in mobile networks has been less pronounced.

Arm's processor cores do feature in the 5G products of vendors such as Nokia. The Finnish company has shifted away from Intel-based systems to an Arm-based CPU supplied by Marvell Technology for "Layer 2 plus" applications—the portions of the radio access network stack that handle less computationally intensive functions. For Layer 1, which covers the more demanding operations, Marvell provides a custom chip incorporating some of Arm's technology.

Now, with support from Kenyi, a startup founded by a Qualcomm executive, Arm may finally gain traction in virtual RAN—a market segment where it has struggled to establish a credible alternative to Intel's dominant position. This partnership could represent a significant step forward in Arm's broader strategy to compete across infrastructure markets traditionally controlled by established incumbents.